


Weakness

by etothepii



Category: Nolanverse - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-17
Updated: 2008-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothepii/pseuds/etothepii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your greatest weakness is his greatest strength.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weakness

**Author's Note:**

> Just messing around with a character study of Infatuated!Joker.

You know you have a thing for the Batman. You’re not going to lie to yourself, and it’s hard to miss the way he makes you _feel_ , full of light and fluff and rainbows. Seeing him makes you want to _grin_ , and not in your normal, ever-so-slightly unhinged way. Touching him makes your pulse pound and your breath catch and it happens _just_ enough to keep things interesting.

When you’re asleep, you dream of him--touching, tasting, teasing him, and sometimes you wake trembling with _want_ and sorrow because you know he doesn’t want you back. Those times, your rage has no limits, and you push your creativity and sadism as far as it can go, losing yourself in Gotham’s suffering until you can almost convince yourself that you _don’t care_.

Sometimes you dream of pain, of victory, of beating him and breaking him and driving him as mad as everyone thinks you are. Those times, you wake excited, grinning, with a warm stickiness between your legs and half-formed plans twisting gleefully between your thoughts. You’ll _make_ him want you. You’ll force him and he’ll like it, and the anticipation makes your heart pound.

He understandsyou. He completes you. He’s your other half in every way. When you push, he pushes back. You hunt him. He hunts you. He’s _everything_ to you. He’s so much morethan anyone else you’ve ever met, more worthythan all the others you’ve nudged into madness.

You don’t really want to win this game. You just want to play it. You and him, whatever’s between the two of you, violence and taunts and games of blood, it’s going to last forever and it’s going to be _amazing_. When you’re around him, everything else blurs, slipping out of focus because he’s the only thing that matters.

You hate it. You hate it you hate it youhateit.

You want to kill him. You want to make him _hurt_ , and you want to make him _suffer_ , suffer like you do, and you want to take every last drop of hope in his body and _destroy_ it. Because that’s what he does effortlessly, without even knowing it, with every disgusted curl of his lip, with every time he takes you and binds you and _throws you away_ like a too-small fish. He doesn’t care about you, and it’s driving you mad, and you can’t understand _why_.

Why doesn’t he want you? Why doesn’t he _care_? Why aren’t you good enough?

Your greatest weakness is his greatest strength, and the only thing you can do about it, the onlything that _saves_ you is making sure he never finds out. You don’t know what you’ll do when he finds out, but you have the feeling it’ll involve the phrase “murder-suicide”. He can break you, but you’re already so broken that you don’t know what’d be left.

You want him so much and you don’t know how to stop it. You hurt him, you push him, you push and push and push at the fragile walls of his sanity and he pushes _back_ and eventually, inevitably, something’s going to give. Someone’s going to lose. A secret, frightened part of you doesn’t think it’s going to be him.

You want to _break_ him, but the mere thought of someone else trying is enough to send you into paroxysms of rage and the worst part about it is that if the situation was reversed, you know he wouldn’t care what happened to you, and that knowledge _hurts_.

You daydream sometimes; some days, you fantasize about cutting your weakness out. You imagine literally taking a knife to your chest (or maybe someone else’s) and _carving_ out the piece of you that is so inexorably tangled and gnarled and _pathetic_. You know it won’t work -- you tried once already -- but that doesn’t stop you from wishing it would.

That isn’t to say you’re unhappy, because you aren’t. It’s not love. This isn’t love. You’re not in love, and the little things (explosions, the look on someone’s face when they _get_ the joke, running the police in circles, dead puppies) still make you laugh. Things are still funny, and the world is still one gigantic joke, and you still want to show everyone the punch line.

You’re so pathetic it’s hilarious, and you’ve spent days laughing at yourself, like laughter will burn away this weakness inside you. (It doesn’t. You tried that too.)

The worst part of it, though, is that you can’t help but feel lost when he’s finally gone. You’ve won the skirmish and the city’s rejected him and now he’s as much an enemy to the city as _you_ are. You should feel free, the entire city laid out for you with no bat-shaped obstacles to get in your way. You should be _happy_ , but you’re _not_.

It’s not that you’re bored. You’re never bored. You don’t _get_ bored. There’s always something for you to _do_ , but it’s just _not the same_. No one’s _worthy_. The police are always one, two, sometimes even three steps behind you. You’re playing chess with idiots who can’t even play Tic-Tac-Toe.

You can’t stand being sloppy, your work has to be _perfect_ before everything goes into motion, but it’s all being wasted because they just don’t seethe _beauty_ of it all. It’s enough to drive you mad. Who cares about razing Gotham to the ground if all it’s going to do is lie back and _take_ it?

You do, of course, but not as much as you _could_. Everything’s just one _sliver_ away from perfect and nothing you do changes that. You can’t find that one missing piece that says _yes_ , and it’s starting to _hurt_.

When you hurt, you react by making everyone else hurt _more_.

After a while, Gotham changes its tune. You make it cry, you make it bleed, you make it _beg_ for him to come back and you _like_ it. You tear it to pieces before its eyes, force everything to your mercy, paint the streets red with blood and black with terror. There’s so much _fear_ , and it’s… it’s okay. It’s nice.

It’s not as good as hanging upside-down from his rope, or jumping with the knowledge that he’ll _catch_ you.

All you want to do is take your fine city by the scruff of its neck and _shake_ it, saying, “See? This is what happens without him,” and you _can,_ so you do, because no one in the world is going to stop you.

The police certainly can’t. They don’t even count. They never count, and you barely notice they’re there, because they’re just so _predictable_. They’re just background noise, filler, extras, _pawns_ in this grand game you’ve set up for the two of you. And he’s not here yet, so you’ll just skip his turn a few times and tell yourself you don’t care.

When he finally comes back, he does a last-second save involving the schoolchildren you tied to a barrel of gunpowder. Then he fights you, and it’s great. It’s fun, and you’re grinning the whole time, because this? You’ve been _waiting_ for this. But when it ends, and he leaves you tied on the ground, you’re oddly disappointed.

Between the glee and the excitement and the laughter, there is a dissonant thread of disappointment and _sadness_ , and you don’t know why, because he’s _back_. He left, and you _made him come back_.

You should be happy, gleeful, bouncing off the walls with _joy_ that your partner is back, that you’re no longer playing a long, long game by yourself. And you _are_. You _are_ happy, and things are just that much more fun, but something’s still _bothering_ you, under the plans and the explosions and the taunting, taunting videotapes you send to the media who are still too stupid to stop broadcasting them.

It isn’t until you’re locked up again, strapped down in a too-bright padded room and dizzy with the drugs they give you that you realize why. You laugh so hard that your stomach clenches with pain and tears come to your eyes.

You did it all for him, and he still doesn’t care.  



End file.
